More Info

Objective

What I am looking for...

Well, my experience and skills are varied. I thoroughly enjoy designing and developing applications for both desktop and the web, yet at the same time, give me a logo to create or an image to edit or work on, and I am just as highly engrossed, and satisfied. I love to help people understand and learn something that they have been unable to grasp, and at the same time, generating a sharp report for a document puts just as big of a smile on my face as anything.

Part of my eccentricity with work capabilities comes from the fact that college has remained out of my financial grasp. I took 32 hours of Tulsa Community College (TCC) classes, but then due to family health problems I had to drop, more than once. Well, apparently that makes me ineligible to get financial aid now until I can pass two classes on my own penny. Which living with family that I am responsible for, family that deals with some fairly serious health issues, means I can sometimes be the only person available to help out and provide support, so... it's kind of a catch-22 for me. Luckily I discovered online training options. I might not be able to afford $40 - $100 computer books, but I can afford $25/Month for a Lynda.com account. And google provides me with free texts, samples, etc that I can download, print out, and peruse at my leisure.

The problem with self-taught individuals is that most employers, at least the ones I have encountered, desire that college degree. This predicament leaves me working as a Graphics Specialist, and extremely under-utilizing my skill-sets, and not as challenged in the areas that are of most interest to me, just waiting for an opportunity to get back in school. So I do as many projects from home as I can juggle. Such as documentation and commenting staff for the Open Source Project known as Postnuke, or I have a web-application/site concept that I am working on with a fellow Adobe Flex/Flash/AIR programmer as time permits, and other similar projects. I try to find things that force me to grow, keep me occupied, and hopefully will one day provide me more financial freedom.

I consider family my top priority. A job that would allow me to work from home would probably be beyond a dream come true. I find myself doing most of my quality work in a chair that is most comfortable, with the ability to listen to music at volumes the average workplace would not allow, and available to break away as needed should health issues arise in my family.

Since such a corporation probably doesn't exist (at least I haven't found one), I should also mention that a good mix of the above works just fine, and I have even been happy with much less. At my current position, I can wear headphones, my chair isn't uncomfortable, and should I need to go home for a health problem, I am able to keep my job and stay working at a steady pace, happy and content, just not as challenged as I would like. I also, of course, do consulting work for various reasons: barter, cash, networking, etc. So if you find my prices listed below outside of your means? Let's talk...

Resume

QUALIFICATIONS SUMMARY

I have over 15 years of experience with MS Access at just about every version Microsoft has come out with. 6+ years with PHP / MySQL / SQL / Oracle / Database design, maintenance, management and related VBA / VB6 / VB.Net and web-based programming. Experience with multple programming languages, technologies and environments as well as being an aggressive student of programming and a competent instructor for software and the skills / languages that I have grasped. My strong points are in bringing non-tech savvy individuals into a better understanding of the technologies required for necessary projects, as well as learning and understanding new software and then being able to present that knowledge in a classroom or singled out environment and through documentation that is written to be understandable by those who need to be as familiar with the software.

I also have around 30 years of art experience (and yes, I am including elementary classes, this IS MY page here...). Now, understand. Experience but no training. I am, and always have been, fascinated by art of any kind. I drew in my early years, painted in my very early years, and graduated to comic book art in my teens. My best friend growing up was Farel Dalrymple and we used to draw ALOT. Now he went on and made a living at it (bastard!) whereas I played around at it. About 4 or 5 years ago I started to get the idea in my head that I wanted to develop a game. But I would, of course, need an artist. I wanted to develop the code behind the game, so I wouldn't have time to do the art, so I needed someone to draw pictures for me. Well, my buddy Farel was too busy (making a living or some other excuse, lol) so he suggested I find a message board and find someone interested. After several aborted attempts on Newsgroups (there are some REAL jerks out there) I finally came to the conclusion that I would do my own artwork. I have drawn for years, surely I can do digital art! And thus began a journey of a thousand bits.

I eventually landed at Pixeljoint and fell in love. These guys (and gals!) do some AMAZING artwork pixel-by-pixel. That's right! They don't do things sloppy or use fancy software. They use MSPaint, or something similar, and draw their artwork pixel-by-bleeding-pixel. I fell in love with the concept. I found what I think to be the premiere pixel-pushing-software package Graphics Gale and use it exclusively. I started doing artwork at that site and have been doing it on and off for years. So, I now can do my own game-art, I can code on my own, now I just need the time. If you check the link below, under OTHER SKILLS for Pixel Art you will see a link to my portfolio there. From pixel art I started discovering all sorts of ways to express myself. LYNDA.com is my current avenue of training on Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Flex, Flash, AIR (yes, all Adobe) and a few others. I am completely fascinated by creating digital art of any kind and spend as much time as I can afford learning new software packages.

On a final side-note here. One other thing that has captured my attention is Digitizing. I have had a few weeks on some digitizing software and love it. Now if ONLY I COULD AFFORD a digitizing Embroidery Machine and the software. I could start making shirts and such. (sigh!) So, as you can see... my hobbies intermix and eventually evolve into saleable skills. I just have to find a company that needs a Jack-of-all-traders, versus a Specialist. Ah well...

TECHNICAL SKILLS

  • CAD / GIS - Related: Auto-Cad, Bentley Geographics / Microstation, Intergraph Geomedia Packages, various 3D Modeling Programs, GUI / Scripting tools in a CAD Environment, Intergraph Web Map
  • Programming: Actionscript 2.0 and 3.0, Flex / Apollo / AIR / Actionscript, C, C++, C#, Visual Basic (6, .NET & For Applications), VBScript, Java, JavaScript, XML, XSL(T), (X)HTML, CSS, ASP, PHP, Flash 4 / 5 / MX / 8
  • Operating Systems: MS Windows 95, 98 (SE), 2000, ME, XP Pro / Corp / Home
  • Office Applications: Microsoft Office, Microsoft Project, Microsoft Publisher, Adobe InDesign
  • Media Applications: Microsoft Publisher, Adobe/Macromedia Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign (CS2 & 3 for all 3), Flash v5 thru CS3
    Adobe CS/CS2/CS3 and Microsoft Office 95 / 98 / 2000 / 2003 / XP
  • Web-Application / Site Design: Postnuke (All Versions), $NewName (once it's finished the rebranding), and most Web-Technologies.

OTHER SKILLS

  • Digital Art: Pixel Art, Vector Art
  • Digitizing: Worked with Janome's Software and another system that I can't remember right now. I'll post it later.

RECENT WORK EXPERIENCE

City of Tulsa, Engineering Graphics
Tulsa, Oklahoma ( 2006-Present )

    Graphics Specialist / Developer
  • Maintain City / County-Wide ATLAS pages with Microstation / Geomedia related skill sets.
  • Developed Customizable Applications utilizing Microstation / Geomedia Toolsets.
  • Developed Webmap Applications utilizing custom storage solutions (Smartstore, Arcview, AccessDB, etc).
  • Develped training documentation on various aspects of City Productivity.

City of Tulsa, Special Projects
Tulsa, Oklahoma ( 2001-2006 )

    Office Assistant / Administrator
  • Managed Departments Project file maintenance.
  • Designed and maintained database application for Project Management (VBA Custom Security).
  • Designed and maintained electronic form template base.
  • Assisted multiple departments on varied Engineering and Programming related tasks and projects.

Private Home
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma ( 1999-2001 )

    In-Home Nanny / Childcare Specialist
  • Managed household and childcare for private family with two children ages newborn and 8 year old.

Thrifty Rent-A-Car, Worldwide Headquarters
Tulsa, Oklahoma ( 1995-1999 )

    Reservation Center Supervisor / Reservationist
  • Managed a team of 30-40 telephone sales representatives.
  • Maintained the highest team average for sales and productivity.
  • Designed and managed an employee evaluation database.
  • Designed and maintained an electronic form template base.
  • Re-Designed Employee New Hire Training Manual / Program.

United States Marine Corps Reserves
Broken Arrow, Oklahoma ( 1993-1996 )

    Field Artillery Fire Controllman - 0844
  • Performed Mathematical / Geographical computations necessary for Artillery Guns to hit designated targets as needed.
  • Mapping / Basic GIS / CAD skills at various levels in a hands-on environment.

EDUCATION

SPECIALIZED TRAINING

Extensive Customer Service Training as both a Customer Services Representative and as a Customer Services Supervisor to both provide customer service to actual customers as well as provide training and reinforcement for customer service agents underneath my supervision.
Extensive Training with MS Access / MySQL / SQL / PHP Database Application Programming, Design, and Maintenance. Have had experience with Training Curriculum Development and Web-Application Development, Documentation and Implementation.
In-depth self-training / classroom-training on Intergraph's Web Map Publisher and GeoMedia Public Works Manager / Professional.

Where To

From Here...

If you think you would like to hire me to do work in any of the areas I am skilled at, please let me know. I am not averse to bartering on my skills. So keep that in mind when looking over my costs.

    Software Development - Desktop / Web-based
    [utilizing: Adobe Flex / Flash / AIR]
  • $125.00/Hr minimum 3 Hours
    Basic Website Development / Maintenance / Customization / Etc
    [utilizing: Basic (X)HTML / Javascript / CSS]
  • $35.00/Hr (minimum 3 hours for New Site Design only)
    Postnuke/$NewName Website Installation / Customization
    [utilizing: Basic (X)HTML / Javascript / CSS / PHP]
  • Base Installation / Maintenance :$35.00/Hr
    Will negotiate Monthly Fee as needed.
  • Theme Development :$35.00/Hr
  • Module Development :$75.00/Hr
    Webhosting
    [utilizing: Personal Hosting Company]
  • Business Account : $50.00/Month (minimum 6 month agreement)
    1. 5gb Storage
    2. Unlimited Email / FTP / MySQL DBs
    3. Website Control Panel
    4. Ask for more details
  • Personal Account : $20.00/Month (minimum 6 month agreement)
    1. 1gb Storage
    2. Unlimited Email / FTP / MySQL DBs
    3. Website Control Panel
    4. Ask for more details
    Training:
  • Negotiable.
    All training is customized for the target class attendees. All training manuals and documentation will be tailored for the needs and desires of the client and will be included in the negotiated contract price. Specific customized classes are available, covering everything from how to put together Mail Out data utilizing the Microsoft Office Package through how to implement an Intergraph Geomedia Webmap Intranet Solution. Some customized classes will require length preparation times, so make sure to give me time to prepare the instructional materials by notifying me and negotiating the prices far in advance of the needs. Rush classes are available on everything but documentation may be sparse to none.
    Other Services
    [Not Listed]
  • Will negotiate.